64 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



their names stand for a certain attitude of thought toward things more 

 or less familiar or things entirely new and strange. 



The English stock that colonized the greater part of the Atlantic 

 seaboard of North America, very early left the marks of its language 

 on hill, valley and stream, and on fauna and flora. What objects it 

 did not designate with old world names were called by the names known 

 to the aboriginal peoples — Indian names — usually much altered pho- 

 netically. In some instances names were invented directly as ex- 

 pressive of some notable characteristic, and, again, some few were 

 borrowed from the languages of alien settlers. A very large propor- 

 tion of the names of natural objects in America are transplanted old 

 world names, a fact not at all surprising when we consider the general 

 similarity in topographical features and in the life forms, both plant 

 and animal, of eastern North America and western Europe, notably 

 England. A comparison of the forest trees of North America with 

 those of western Europe shows that a large proportion of the various 

 kinds are common to both sides of the Atlantic. The settlers found 

 much the same aspect of woodland that they had known at home. 

 There were oaks and beeches little different from those of Europe. 

 The same was true of the pines, firs, spruces and larches, and of the 

 birches, alders, aspens and poplars. The maple, elm, ash, plane tree, 

 chestnut, walnut, cherry, hazel and dogwood were broadly recognized 

 as familiar trees, though differing somewhat from their transatlantic 

 representatives. The comparatively few trees that were entirely 

 strange to the early colonists, as the hickory, sassafras, persimmon, 

 magnolia, buckeye and tulip tree, came to be known, for the most part, 

 by their aboriginal names, though much corrupted both in spelling 

 and in speech. The two last named trees — the buckeye and the tulip 

 — were so called, the first from the fancied resemblance of its nut to 

 the eye of a deer (a true backwoodsman's comparison), and the tulip 

 tree from its gorgeous blossoms. Beverley in his ' History of Vir- 

 ginia ' (1705) speaks of ' the large Tulip Tree, which we call a Poplar.' 

 The tree is not a poplar, but belongs with the magnolias, and the 

 compound ' tulip poplar,' frequently used at the present time, is an 

 unfortunate misnomer. The general similarity of the forests of 

 eastern North America and western Europe is the result of certain 

 geological conditions, among which was a once more or less continuous 

 land connection between the northern portions of the two continents, 

 together with a climate that allowed of a very wide dispersal of plants 

 and animals. Among mammals, the bear, wolf, fox, deer, hare or 

 rabbit, weasel, otter, badger, beaver, squirrel and others were recog- 

 nized as being closely allied to similar old world types. But with 

 the curious racoon and opossum, the colonists knew of no European 

 animals in any way like them, and we find John Clayton, in 1693, 

 naively writing of the racoon as ' a Species of a Monkey.' Besides 



